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Years ago I asked God why He was allowing me to meet so many Â people. This past year I have seen some answers.Â For example, this Christmas I felt led to be involved again in an outreach we have going at a house during the Winter Haven Festival of Lights. Some of our usual helpers were ready to be involved; a youth group, a church group and some local musicians. But a real boost this year came from an unsuspected source, “glitter.” To God be the glory!

On a Sunday morning in December, the artist of our centerpiece mural asked for glitter to be sprinkled on the background paint. A couple hours later after church I Â reached for my Bible to go home, but I noticed glitter on it. A nice sister in Christ was standing there and claimed it probably came from her Christmas sweater. Well, seeing a connection I said, ‘that is weird,’ I was just thinking of glitter this morning and mentioned what we are doing in Winter Haven. The woman next to her jumped in to say that she had over 100 cardboard tubes that she wanted to give to somebody in Winter haven for possible decorations. I could sense God in all this and went to pick them up.

Those tubes became “testimony tubes” and a few hundred Tucsonans stopped by our tree spot Â and decorated them with prayers, blessings and of course, more glitter. There were more connections made around this tree full of shiny hanging tubes. One in particular is inspiring. A group of Pima Community College students with the ministry called CRU stopped by. The leader liked what we were doing and we got her email.Â Â And on it goes… In a totally unrelated meeting; I met with another Pima student at Starbucks a few days later who happens to be this CRU leader’s roommate! To add some more life to our Winter Haven house, we used the 200 two inch white tube lids to set up a hockey puck shot on the driveway with a hanging Grinch as the target. Between the tree with tubes and the hockey shot was our inviting fire pit, stage to sing from, hay bales to sit on and our centerpiece mural, framed with the requested glittering with these few large words, “COME LORD JESUS COME.”

That short prayer was surely whispered by many as they passed by. He Â is truly Emmanuel, God with us. Â The story that started two thousand years ago continues, with shiny new twists.